


Uncharted Territory at the Edge of the World

by Khadgarfield



Category: Warcraft - All Media Types, World of Warcraft
Genre: Fluff, Healthy communication FTW, Light Angst, M/M, Mathias HAS Feelings, Mathias Talks About Feelings, Office Sex, Past Mathias Shaw/Edwin Vancleef, Romance, Tattoo!Flynn, They Kiss Sometimes Too, first 'i love you's
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:33:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 14,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27078868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khadgarfield/pseuds/Khadgarfield
Summary: Mathias Shaw struggles to come to terms with the way everything panned out for him. Flynn is a skilled navigator, helping him map the course of his life.Tattoofic!!! :^)Rated M for now, will be E for Chapter 5
Relationships: Flynn Fairwind/Mathias Shaw
Comments: 56
Kudos: 63





	1. The Octant Projection

**Author's Note:**

> Shadowlands? King-napping? 
> 
> Never heard of it lol.

Spymaster Mathias Shaw pressed his hands firmly around his coffee mug, watching Flynn in as he poured over the maps spread out on the kitchen table. It was too late to be drinking coffee, but the day had been long and slow to pass. The spymaster was tired. Peacetime was all well and good, but the desk work he used to savor didn’t hold his attention like it used to, and he often found himself missing brisk walks around Boarlus Harbour, and the feeling of fresh air on his face. If he was being honest with himself, he missed the place, even if he had been able to bring all the best Boralus had to offer back home to Stormwind with him.

Flynn made a thoughtful noise, and flicked between two of the pages he was studying. Mathias watched the shallow crease between his brows, the way his eyes raked over the detailed lines and co-ordinates written on the ancient page, and thought that whatever information was contained therein must have been puzzling, even for a seaman. He drunk in the way the firelight brought out the copper tones in Flynn’s hair, and admired how his shoulders and arms looked in his undershirt. They were thick with muscle, always warm and welcoming, and delicately embellished with intricate lines and pictures the likes of which Mathias had never seen before.

Well, perhaps that was an exaggeration. He had seen tattoos on the Kaldorei – such modifications were commonplace among ancient races, and for many of the other less ancient races of Azeroth besides. Stylistically, though, they were completely different, and Mathias had never encountered a _human_ who wore ink of their own volition. Though Flynn repeatedly told him it was a common practice among seafarers in Kul Tiras.

Considering the elegance and detail of Flynn’s tattoos, Mathias supposed that _had_ to be true. The work looked undeniably professional, as if performed by someone (or many people, perhaps) who had practiced the skill over and over again. Thinking back to his time stationed in Boralas, Mathias supposed he _had_ spotted the occasional barkeep with an anchor on his forearm, or woman with sea stalks etched beside her ankle. These meagre accents, however, were nothing compared to the complex pieces that adorned Flynn, masking pale skin with projections of the constellations, with sweeping waves and nautical paraphernalia and images of the titans and the creations of Azeroth. Oh, and Mathias’ favourite - twin swallows nestled in mirror image of one another beneath his clavicles.

“Where did you say you got these?” Flynn asked, jolting Mathias out of his ponderings.

“Oh. Uh, Rell.” He flushed, embarrassed to be caught ogling even though he had been granted the right to do so whenever he pleased, in explicit terms. “He worked with SI:7 when we were in Pandaria. They showed up on my desk with a note, so I suspect he sent them back with the scout team deployed to the Krasarang Wilds last month.”

“Why?”

“I’m not sure. The note bore a greeting and a suggestion that they may be of interest to SI:7. Which perhaps they might but I think these are beyond my cartographic abilities.”

“Hate to say it, Spymaster, but they may be beyond mine too.”

Flynn laughed and tapped his nail against the top map in the pile.

“This one, I think you are right, though. It’s a Mogu projection of Kalimdor predating the sundering. But I bet my left nut it’s a fake.” He pointed to the corner of the map, where Mathias could see a faint smudge that looked like it may have been grime or mildew or some other symptom of great age. “See?”

“See what?”

“Plate marks.” He said matter of factly. “Ancient Mogu maps weren’t engravings, they were hand drawn on silk or carved on rock. Plus, Pandaren and Mogu both used grid and scale projections until long _after_ the sundering.” He swept the map aside, as though he was sick of looking at it, and Mathias was taken aback by how confidently he dismissed and object that was potentially ancient and potentially priceless. Flynn continued.

“This one, though, I like. I can’t make head or tails of it of course, and I’d gladly bet my _other_ nut that it’s also not drawn by any Mogu. But I think this one and…” he rifled through the papers, and located another, smaller map. “this one are the same exact thing projected differently. That one is an azimuthal projection, which means all the points on it are proportionally correct to the center, even if it looks a bit fucked up on paper. This one… well. I hate to say it, but I’ve never seen a map like this before.”

The map that had interested him was a bizarre thing – eight triangular quadrants of a globe arranged in two clusters, like two flowers blooming side by side. The landmass depicted on the did not look like the familiar bulky shape of Ancient Kalimdor, but nor did it look like the face of Azeroth Mathias would recognize today.

“And the Mogu language?” Mathias asked. Flynn shrugged.

“I dunno if it’s really Mogu at all,” He mused. “It _looks_ like it, but I can’t read it and I assume you can’t either.”

Mathias shook his head.

“I can find someone who can,” He assured him. “If you think that would help.”

“I mean, I’ve seen all I need to see, I think. These are pretty nifty, and I’m flattered you thought to bring them to me for an opinion, but I’m not sure I can help more than what I already have.” He smiled sheepishly. “Besides, I’ve never even been around Pandaria. I’ve certainly never been further south than that. I know there's whisperings of things over the horizon down that way, but it seems like a load of bunk if you ask me.” He paused for a moment, regarding Mathias with fondness.

Oh of course. Now _he_ was going to start criticizing Mathias’ decision to sent scouts out south, as well. Mathias had been dealing with complaints and arguments about it ever since he had made the suggestion, but light knew he needed to find something to do with himself and his agents these days. The unexplored lands of Pandaria and the south seas were as good a place to stary as any, and it had the added bonus of making sure his men and women weren’t just sitting around in Stormwind being listless and starting barfights with one another.

“I know you're bored, Mathias.” Flynn seemed to read his mind, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms loosely across his chest. “With things being quiet right now, it makes sense. But you should stop sending agents out on reconnaissance to nowhere. If I didn’t know better, I would say you're hoping to find trouble because you’re starting to go stir crazy being stuck in one place.”

“What?” Mathias was slightly offended. “What are you talking about?”

Flynn wiggled his eyebrows teasingly.

“You just seem restless. Chasing pointless leads and drinking coffee at seven pm. I know the feeling, funnily enough. ‘Cept when I get it I can just get on a boat and sail away wherever I please.”

“You haven’t been to sea for months Flynn.”

“I know,” He hooked a loose strand of hair back behind one of his ears carelessly. It made Mathias’ heart flutter. How much longer would he have to endure feeling like a virginal maiden, whenever Flynn did something as mundane as touch his own hair? “I haven’t been inclined yet, I suppose. I have better things to do.”

He began tidying the maps spread on the table, folding and stacking them carefully along the same ancient folds they had lain in for centuries, and pushed them aside.

“This Rell of yours.” He pondered aloud. “He’s an elf, correct?”

“Kaldorei, yes.”

“Surely an elf, any elf, would be more likely to be familiar with old maps and languages than I would?”

Mathias hummed. That had occurred to him too, but Flynn had had something that none of the Kaldorei agents at SI:7 headquarters did, and that was practical skill and familiarity with the _medium,_ as opposed to the mere ability to read text. Mathias told him as much.

“Besides. If you are correct, and the projection of Ancient Kalimdor is a fake, then I sincerely doubt anyone in my professional circle would have noticed. None of us are historians. Or cartographers. Or pirates.”

“As it were, neither am I.” Flynn grinned at him across the table. “Any rumors you may have heard to that effect have been greatly exaggerated.”

Mathias gestured to the swallows, partially visible under the neckline of Flynn’s undershirt.

“These say otherwise.”

“Birthmarks,” Flynn told him without missing a beat. “Very expensive, very painful, but birthmarks nonetheless. Just like the freckles on your face.”

“I got these for free.” Mathias brought his coffee mug to his lips to hide his smile. “And they didn’t hurt, either.”

“Well in that case I got conned.” Flynn leaned over the table, to press a kiss against Mathias’ temple. Mathias watched the muscles in his arms moving sleekly under his skin. The motion sent the faintest ripple through the waves of the great sea he bore on his forearms, and when lips touched his face, he melted a little. Flynn was always so gentle with that it made his heart ache.

“Maybe you did,” Mathias agreed. “but thank you anyway, for helping with that. I appreciate it.”

“You know I would do anything for you.” Flynn told him, and Mathias believed it.


	2. The Epic of Golganneth

Flynn stretched luxuriously, his body face down and making the shape of a pinwheel on the rumpled sheets. The morning light diffused prettily over his nakedness, his hair was a tangle of copper against the pillow slip. The blanket twisted around his upper thigh barely preserved the last of his modesty – That is if he had any modesty to begin with - and beside him, curled up the small section of bed he was able to keep for his own, Mathias huffed and pushed away an arm that had drifted too close.

“Do you _mind_?”

“Mmph.” Came the muffled reply. Flynn was awake, but with his face buried in his pillow he could feign semi-consciousness.

“ _Flynn,_ one day you’re going to shove me out of this fucking bed, you know that right?”

Mathias was teetering so close to the edge of the mattress that he could feel his ass almost floating in the empty air. Flynn made a sound that might have been a laugh, and he dragged himself over onto his back as though the effort was just too much for this early in the morning.

“Well, we can’t have that,” He mumbled, voice thick with sleep. Mathias, who had endured a restless night haunted by partially consolidated nightmares, was too tired to find it particularly endearing even though he recognized how sexy he looked like this. All disheveled and nude and well… luxuriant. Mathias thought there was a delicious hedonism about Flynn, and sometimes at night while he watched his pretty face in sleep, that longing to lose himself in the depths of it kept him awake too.

“Just. Move over a bit would you?” Mathias asked him, his tone softening as his annoyance ebbed away. “I want to stretch a little as well.”

Flynn cracked his eyes open and grinned a dozy grin.

“I’ll give you a stretch,” He jabbed an arm out and took Mathias’ wrist in hand. Mathias let him pull him closer, and the bedframe creaked under them as they rearranged. Flynn settled in the middle of the bed, and Mathias came to rest nestled under his arm, next to his chest. He smelled good, skin fragrant with the heady smell of sweat and salt and fading soap, but as Mathias brushed his lips fleetingly over against one of the swallows beneath his collarbone, he mumbled.

“You stink. Have a shower later please.”

“Aye, whatever you say Boss.” Flynn laughed, and carded a hand lazily through Mathias’s hair. From this angle, Mathias could see his morning wood lifting the sheet. His chest rising and falling in time with his gentle breath. His right arm, magnificently rendered in black and teal ink, rested bent across his belly. Mathias met the commanding gaze of the titan Golganneth, who stared back at him unblinking from Flynn’s forearm, and felt the image call to something deep in his core. He moved his own hand, to reach out and caress the lines of the titan's face, when Flynn asked.

“What time is it?”

“Not sure,” Mathias told him quietly, processing the feeling of skin under his fingertips. It always took him by surprise for a moment, how normal feeling the flesh was that bore these things was. The first time he had touched them, asked Flynn in a shaking breath if it was okay, he had expected them to have the cold knotted texture of scars. Or perhaps to feel rough and inhuman. Instead, the skin was smooth and warm, and Flynn’s fine blond arm hairs felt almost identical to Mathias’.

“Maybe 6?”

“The sun is up,”

“Sun rises at 5.30 during summer.”

“Oh right. Weird mainlander stuff.”

Flynn flexed his fingers on his right hand, as though Mathias’ touch was tickling him but he had not yet noticed.

“You know, if you can’t sleep you can just wake me up. I’m always happy to keep you company.”

“No, I don’t want to. If I do that both of us will never get any rest at all.”

“I don’t mind.”

“I do.” Mathias nuzzled his collarbone, still not pulling his eyes away from the titan on his arm. It felt as though the two were locked in a staring contest, one that Mathias could never hope to win. Unless…

He pressed his thumb over Golganneth’s face. This made Flynn notice what he was doing for the first time, and he made a soft noise of amusement.

“Scared he will see you doing something you shouldn’t?” he asked. Mathias shook his head.

“No. It’s not that.”

“Then what?” Mathias could hear his amusement in his voice. He slipped his arm free from Mathias’ grip and elevated his arm so he could regard the image on his body for himself. Probably for the thousandth time.

“I don’t know, Flynn. It’s just strange. Of all the things you could have chosen to decorate yourself, you picked _that_.”

The titan was not the most benevolent looking of the pantheon, that was for sure. Eonar would have been better. Even Norganon. And to have him depicted stirring a tempest like that… frankly it was a bit absurd. Mathias didn’t even think Flynn was particularly religious. He didn’t seem to reflect all that often on the nature of the divine.

Flynn hummed and rolled over, letting Mathias slip off his chest and onto his side, and settled down next to him so they were lying face to face.

“It’s not just decoration, you handsome nunce. I mean, they can be. But these ones aren’t. Tattoos have meaning.”

“Meaning? What kind of meaning?”

He knew among the elves the tattoo tradition was imbued with spiritual and cultural significance. But all the pictures he saw on Flynn, and in passing on other Kul Tirans when he had been away during the war, seemed to lack the numinous quality that made elven tattoos seem weighty with import. Flynn’s pictures seemed too… representative. Too specific. And pirates, he had thought, didn’t care much for matters of great cosmic or cultural consequence. It was his assumption the piratical tattoo movement was little more than an exercise in vanity and showing off who had more money to spend.

“Well, they’re symbols aren’t they. They can be protective, like a superstition, or they can be symbols of things that are important to you. Some people might get them just ‘cause they like them but… I’m not that type.”

Mathias raised his eyebrows a little, curious.

“Aren’t you?”

They had been together long enough now, that moments Mathias felt he learned new things about Flynn were becoming fewer and fewer. The journey of discovery was being replaced by a steady sense of stability and common understanding, and that was such a profound and meaningful thing that Mathias wouldn’t exchange it for anything in this world or the next. But he did miss the thrill of a new kernel of insight. Something he could clutch and memorise, and remember when they were apart and he wanted to feel lucky to have him. 

“No way. These are here ‘cause I think they are important. Like Golgonneth here.” He quirked the corner of his lip in a half smile, his arm moving so he could rest his wrist on the pillow between them and the titan was on full display. “Golganneth bestowed dominion of the storms and the skies on the keepers, back in the day. But dominion over the seas?” His crooked smile turned into a mischievous grin. The grin that made Mathias’s stomach feel like it was full of butterflies.

“What about it?”

“He bestowed that on _me_.”

And even though Mathias was tired, he couldn’t help but laugh.

“Oh light. That sounds sacrilegious don’t you think?”

“Aye maybe. Maybe. That’s why I have her here too, to keep me in line.” He shrugged his shoulder, and Mathias felt his eyes drawn to the image of the Tidemother described on his bicep.

“That’s a very tall story Flynn. Not even I believe it and I like to give you the benefit of the doubt.”

Flynn winked, the ghost of that wicked smile still playing around his face.

“But you get my point, no?’

“I get your point.” Mathias smiled back. “but honestly I think that makes them even more daunting. If they are symbols of whats important to you.”

He thought about it for a moment, remembering his own experiences with things of great significance and how badly that had gone in the past. So many people and things he had cared about, that had disappeared from his grasp like shadows disappeared in the daylight. Things he didnt want to be reminded of.

“How are you not afraid to commit to something like that for the rest of your life?" He asked. "What do you care about that much you are willing to wear it forever?”

Flynn clicked his tongue, like he thought that was a silly kind of question.

“You sound like you’re trying to tell me you are afraid of commitment,” he said. “But that aside, it's not about _caring.._. I think of it more like a journey. The tattoos are telling the story of my becoming, and of what brought me here today. You follow?”

“Mmm… Not at all.”

Flynn sighed.

“The thing about stories like the story of a life, that is that sometimes, parts of them are bad. There are things I wish hadn’t happened, or things that I wish might have gone differently… but I like to have them on my body anyway, because they are a part of who I am. Like, oh I don’t know… all that illegal stuff I did? A part of me regrets it, as you know, but I wouldn’t take it back because at the end of it all, through Helheim and high water, I still made it here to you.”

Mathias wasn’t really sure what to say to that.

Flynn was looking at him warmly, as though the only thing in the universe was him lying here in their cosy little bed, and for all intents and purposes in that moment he may have been. Flynn was the center of a universe too, after all, and Mathias could feel the gravity of him pulling him in, drawing them close, and ultimately he decided that it would just be easier to close the space between them and kiss him deeply so their universes collided into one.

And then he thought no more, for a little while.


	3. The Rose of the Winds

It was a cold, grey day in Stormwind – one of those rare times it was impossible to see the ocean from the city, even from their vantage point by Lion’s Rest. Flynn’s breath sparkled silver as he exhaled, and his hair was damp, clinging to the edges of his face. In spite of the chill, and in spite of the drizzle, Flynn’s mood was light and he walked with the usual bounce in his step. Mathias, one gloved hand laced with Flynn’s, the other holding a half-eaten nutterbar, didn’t feel quite as buoyant. In fact, he felt about as good as the weather, hardly able to follow the train of conversation as they made their way out of the rain, under the archway that separated the cathedral district from the descent to Stormwind harbor.

“So anyway,” Flynn was animated, talking with his spare hand as much as was talking with his voice, “I said to him _,_ ‘you and I both know that’s not a parrot, and that you aren’t a Vulpera. And if you think there's anything you can do about the so-called ‘Telaari grape’ situation then you really are stupider than you look’. Well! He didn’t like that, very much.”

Mathias nodded, as though he was still listening, and took another bite of the nutterbar. He didn’t care for it, finding it far too sweet and far too nostalgic. He hadn’t had one for years and years - not since he used to buy them to give to his trainees when they did well in practice. Not since the time one _particular_ trainee had told him that candy was a childish reward, and there was something much better he could give him instead...

“I imagine he didn’t,” Mathias said, pushing that memory back down in the deep and dark, where it belonged. Flynn laughed, and continued.

“The best part was, it really _was_ a parrot. Of course, I knew he didn’t really know that for sure. I guess that’s just the problem with saurids – if you don’t know what they look like then it's easy to mistake them for something else, and if you don’t know what a _parrot_ looks like then I sincerely doubt a saurid can help you.”

“Why was the mage there?” Mathias asked him. Flynn shrugged.

“Portals, I guess. You know how they are.”

Mathias had thought he did, but perhaps not. He hummed and offered Flynn the rest of his candy bar.

“Do you want the rest?” He asked, and his voice sounded flat even though he tried to keep it casual. Flynn took it, hesitantly, giving him a questioning look but not saying anything. Mathias sighed.

“I used to like them more when I was younger.” He explained. “I suppose I lost my sweet tooth at some stage and never noticed.”

“I can give all the sugar you need, Spymaster. Just say the word.” He winked, tapping the candybar against his bottom lip in a gesture that might have been innocuous, if Mathias hadn’t watched him do the exact same thing with his dick every single time he went down on him. He flushed and turned his face away, looking towards the horizon and the cloak of fog that enshrouded Azeroth herself.

“Don’t be indecent.” He said coolly. Beside him, he could sense Flynn’s energy drop a little.

“Oh. Uh. Sorry?”

When Mathias didn’t reply, Flynn sighed and squeezed his hand quickly. “Oh come on now. Don’t be like that. I was just trying to cheer you up. You look really miserable today, you know?”

“I’m fine,” Mathias lied. Flynn, however, was not as much of an idiot as he let on.

“Horseshit. If something is bothering you, you can tell me.” He paused to stuff the candy into his mouth, and continued to speak while chewing it. At least he didn’t do that very often. “Is it work? Are you still bored there? Did someone take your favourite pen again without asking?”

They were beginning to down the stairs now, out of the city and toward the water where, despite the weather, Mathias knew there would be men working. Heaving boxes and rigging sails and undergoing repairs on vessels due to set out to sea in the morning. The _Bold Arva,_ of course, was one of them.

“No,” Mathias had to watch his feet as they walked, to make sure he didn’t slip on the wet stone steps. “Nothing like that.”

He wondered how much he could say, without sounding a little bit pathetic. Or a lot pathetic. He decided nothing, and tried to change the subject.

“I asked Velen if he knew anything about the maps the other day,” He said. “Since he is learned in languages of many ancient races. He told me he couldn’t read them, but he recognized the landmasses in the two unusual ones as possibly being Argus. Before the incident, of course.”

He could feel Flynn looking at him, in a way that said he _knew_ Mathias was trying to distract him, and didn't want him digging further into what was on his mind.

“I thought I said the maps were bunk?” he asked.

“You did.”

“Well okay. But I don’t know why you would ask for my opinion if you are only going to disregard it. And besides, I really think you should just stop thinking about them before you decide to fling yourself across Azeroth like you’re _that_ desperate for something to do. It’s a wild goose chase.”

“Fling myself across Azeroth?” Mathias scoffed. “That’s rich coming from you.”

Oops.

Flynn inhaled sharply, as though struck. Mathias regretted the slip of the tongue instantly as an awkward silence fell between them.

“Mathias." Flynn broke the silence eventually. "I do actually need to work, you know.”

_Light damn him!_

Flushing, Mathias tried to salvage the situation as best he could.

“I’m sorry, Flynn. It’s just… I guess I am somewhat concerned about you leaving tomorrow.” He settled on. It was a near enough approximation of the truth that it sounded believable. “The weather lately has been awful and…”

And although he would never, ever say it, this would be the first time Flynn had been away from him for months now. They had been inseparable every night since Mathias had suggested they move in together. Before that even. He wasn’t sure he remembered what life without Flynn there was like.

Okay that was a lie. He remembered. He remembered enough to know that he hadn’t loved it, but now he had tasted the alternative he knew he would hate it quite intensely now.

“Forecast for tomorrow is clear and bright,” Flynn said, but his voice was softer, as though he understood what Mathias meant and that he understood Mathias wasn’t ready to say it yet, out loud. His walking pace slowed, until he was still, and Mathias took a few more steps before he realized. They stood together, sharing a few seconds of silence that was far more comfortable than their last one, and the mist muffled the sound and sight of the world around them, as if it really was just the two of them, alone.

“I still worry,” Mathias said.

“I’ve sailed in worse weather than you can dream of, you know.”

“I know.”

That wasn’t what he was afraid of.

He was afraid of what might become of himself in Flynn’s absence. What he would do when he woke up from a restless sleep in the dead of night, and he didn’t have a warm body to wrap himself around. When he sat in his office with no work on his desk except a handful of obscure maps he had never asked for, and his mind wandered back to questions and memories he would have rather left forgotten.

The contrast of time and place. Then and now. The things that had unfolded to place him here in this life and ultimately, had delivered him Flynn.

Beautiful Flynn.

Who tilted his head to the side, just a degree, and despite his eyes being warm they bore the shadow of concern deep within them.

“It’ll be okay,” He said gently. “It’s only going to be a few days. Not like I’m sailing off the edge of Azeroth.”

“You would be a piss poor sailor if you did,” Mathias replied. Flynn laughed, but it was a tender, comforting laugh, rather than a laugh of booming amusement.

“That is true enough.” He pulled softly on Mathias’ hand, drawing him back into him so they were standing face to face. The hand not holding Mathias’ elevated, and he hooked one of his bangs back behind his ear in the way Mathias liked, giving him a glimpse of the inside of his wrist. There, on the delicate skin close to his palm, Flynn sported a compass rose. Stunningly intricate. Flynn had told him it had been his first, after the swallows.

 _The compass helps me stay on track,_ he had said. _Makes sure I always know how to find my way home._

Mathias had asked him what that was supposed to mean – it was a picture, after all. It had no means to function in any way resembling a real compass. Flynn’s answer had been simple, but still incomprehensible.

_Well, you know the old saying about home? About how home is where the heart is?_

“I promise, I will be okay,”

Mathias nodded. Flynn kept talking.

“And I promise, you will be too.”

“How can you promise that? You don’t know it.”

“What? Of course I do.” The corners of his mouth quirked upwards and he brought his spare hand to the side of Mathias’s face. His hands were cold and ungloved, but as the pad of his thumb brushed against the high point of his cheekbone, Mathias felt himself lean into the touch. “I know it because I know you, and I know you are stubborn and clever and stronger than I am. Plus, I _need_ you to be okay, because I need you to be here to come home to.”

He paused for a moment, just a second where maybe he might have caught the words on the tip of his tongue. Instead, he surrendered to the flow of emotion visible in his eyes, and let them pass into the air between their faces.

“I love you.”

He had never said it before. Neither of them had. No one had _ever_ said that to Mathias and meant it, and hearing it for the first time was like… it was like in the space of two infinite seconds, his whole life shifted around him. He blinked for a moment, stunned to silence, and Flynn looked intently into him as though waiting for something. Waiting for the truth.

His mouth formed around a clutch of words he had never said – not even in jest, not even whispered into his pillow at the dead of night. It was as though it was his heart that was speaking, not his tongue, because his tongue didn’t really know how.

“I love you too.”

He meant it.


	4. Roll the Bones

The dice clattered across the table, and landed only a few inches from Mathias’s ale. The man who cast them, a youthful city guard who seemed to be off duty for the night, grinned wickedly when he saw the numbers they bore.

“Nine,” He said, “High wins. I roll.”

“By all means, my good friend. Go ahead.”

Flynn addressed the stranger as though they really _were_ friends, and reached to his belt for the small pouch of coins he kept there for this purpose. Mathias could see he was on his way to being drunk already, the colour of intoxication high in his cheeks, but his eyes were alight and alert, and Mathias had a _very_ bad feeling about this in the pit of his stomach. He could tell that this challenger - this _child_ – was about to be taken to the proverbial cleaners. In his conceit, of course, he didn’t even know it; who would suspect anyone as amicable as Flynn of being anything other than a moron?

“Uh, Captain?” Mathias gave Flynn a look of apprehension. Was the fool so tipsy already that his better judgement was beginning to fail him? His sense of morality? He did dearly love Dwarven beer, and tended to guzzle volumes of it when he thought Mathias wasn’t looking. Flynn rolled his eyes, bumping his shoulder against Mathias’ as if he thought that might reassure him.

“It’s fine Mat. The man knows what he’s doing.”

“Does he though?”

The boy across the table scoffed.

“Of course I fucking do, Grandpa. Who do you think you are?”

Oh.

Grandpa, huh?

Mathias narrowed his eyes, lips pressing into a thin line. Flynn let out a short, surprised bark of laughter before beginning his hand up to cover his mouth. The child stared at him, impudent and cocky.

Fine. Alright then. The child knew what he was in for. Let him have it. The boy's face was smug, as though he had put Mathias well in his place. But oh no. That expression wasn’t going to last very long.

Eyes locked with the stranger, Mathias leaned into Flynn, close enough that he could breathe an instruction in his ear.

_“Fuck him up.”_

He said it barely loud enough for him to hear himself over the background rabble of the pub. Flynn, however, got the message. He nodded, a tilt of the head that was only just perceptible, and the gesture filled Mathias with a deep, vengeful sense of satisfaction. The feeling must have been visible on his face, because for a fleeting moment the challenger had the good sense to look afraid. His mask of arrogance was back in a matter of seconds, however. As Mathias pulled away from Flynn, he allowed himself to break eye contact, focusing instead on draining the rest of his ale from his mug.

Mathias knew he was being petty, but the boy had hit a nerve. When Flynn had been away, Mathias had spent _ages_ looking at his face in the mirror, examining the wrinkles around his eyes and mouth, and processing the grey hairs that proliferated at his temples. His memory of Flynn during that time had been a torment – recalling how vibrant he was, how energetic and full of life, raised so many questions he just didn’t have the answer to. The most pressing, of course, was how anyone so glorious could _possibly_ be in love with a boring antique like him. His skin crawled just thinking about it, though he wasn’t sure yet if it was more about the disparity in their ages, or the fact that Flynn made him uncomfortably aware that now, he was old _._ At some point during his mirror vigils, it had occurred to him that his life was already half-way over.

And what did he have to show of it, besides Flynn?

He couldn’t deal with this right now, he decided. He needed a distraction. Failing something more permanent, like a long and intensive reconnaissance mission or a bout of serious political intrigue, dice seemed like as good a distraction as any.

A wave of interest passed through the bar patrons nearby, when the challenger set two silver coins in the middle of the table. Flynn’s contribution to the pot clinked when he tossed them down as well. Sitting back in his seat, which had his coat cast over the back of it and creaked under his weight as he moved, Flynn rolled up the sleeves of his tunic and exposed his tattooed forearms. If the sounds of coins falling attracted interest from the patronage, the sight of his tattoos made them positively bristle. Mathias could see a few people the next table over lean back, to get a better eyeful of what was going on.

The challenger rolled the dice. The voices of the people around them dipped for just a moment, as they hit the tabletop, and a soft laugh carried from somewhere in the crowd when they landed facing five and six upwards. Eleven. An instant pass.

“Beginners luck,” Someone called, and in the face of such an anti-climactic cast, conversation in the bar resumed as it had been before. Mathias scowled. Flynn, however, seemed unbothered. Without missing a beat, he put four silver pieces into the middle of the table, alongside the four that were already there. If the youth had intended to take his earnings back, maybe keep half and gamble the rest, he was out of luck.

“Again,” Flynn told him. “High?”

“High,” the young man confirmed, and he rolled a ten. Flynn took the dice. Cast them. A five. He pushed them back and once more, it was the challenger who took the come out.

This time, a four. Mathias knew enough about dice to know that this was the point, and now he had to roll a four again to win. Flynn’s face was still unreadable, but Mathias could see his concentration in the way he held his shoulders, and the way he sat there with his hands laced in front of him as though he was in prayer. Mathias recognized this as an intentional show of focus; Flynn had grand ideas about games of chance, and how to win them. It wasn’t really about the luck of things, he had explained once - it was about mind games. Psyching the enemy out. Mathias wasn’t sure he believed it, but he did know that he had watched Flynn do this before and he absolutely could not argue with the fact that he won a _lot._ More than a lot. No matter how drunk he was, or how many enemies he ended up with, Flynn Fairwind never seemed to stop.

Mathias glanced to the boy, who it seemed was already starting to feel the pressure from just a handful of silver. A faint furrow was visible in his brow as he scooped the dice up again and cast them. They landed on an eight. Again. A five. Again. Eleven.

Not so lucky when he wasn’t setting the point. Flynn clicked his tongue. The younger man’s eyes flickered up to Flynn’s face for a moment, then down to his hands crossed on the table in front of him. Mathias saw him notice that Flynn had a pair of dice tattooed on the outside of his arm, close to his hand and nestled between an image of a sabre and a stylized turtle. He swallowed.

This time when he rolled, it was a four. His sigh of relief was visible.

“Congratulations,” Flynn told him. Once more without hesitation, he set eight silver down in the middle of the table, doubling the pool to sixteen. Suddenly, Mathias saw what he was doing.

_He’s trying to make the kid think he’s lost more than he has. Building up the pot before he can cash out._

With a larger pile of silver in the table, a small audience was returning to the game. They still weren’t entirely invested, but they were starting to be, and Mathias himself felt… somewhat intrigued. Even though he knew where this was going.

“High again,” The challenger said. He rolled a nine. Flynn rolled a four. The youth looked as though he was not enjoying being the shooter anymore. Mathias thought he could see beads of sweat on his brow as he rolled. Had it occurred to him that even if he lost now, he was still only losing two silver?

_Of course not. Flynn is doing his utmost to ensure he doesn’t._

When the challenger rolled a two on the come out, he sagged noticeably, like a sad ragdoll. Flynn cracked a small smile. His eyes flickered to Mathias’ to touch them for a moment, communicating something very specific and intentional, then swiveled back to the youth across the table.

“Tough luck mate,” He scooped the silver towards himself, secreting it back into his pouch. The boy protested.

“Hang on a minute! I’m not done playing yet!”

Hook, line, and sinker.

Now people were _really_ looking. Mathias chewed on the inside of his cheek, knowing what came next. The odd sensation squirming in his stomach might have been mistaken for guilt, if he didn’t know it was really excitement. A vindictive thrill. It had been a while since he had felt anything even remotely bordering on a thrill. Just sitting in his office, doing paperwork, waiting for something to happen and now… this. Magnificent. Flynn laughed, and tossed his ponytail back over his shoulder. Mathias was struck by how charming he was. Dynamic. Even when slightly drunk, he could still be clever. He felt a surge of attraction, and had to resist the urge to reach out a hand and seize his chin and kiss him forcibly right there in front of everyone.

“Well alright kid, alright. But let’s play for something a little more important this time.” He cocked his head, indicating that Mathias should do as instructed. Mathias put his hand into the pocket of his civilian overcoat, and withdrew a handful of gold pieces.

“… How much?” The boy asked, greed shining in his eyes.

“Seven to start,” Mathias told him, with ice in his tone. He lay them on the table, and when he withdrew his hand, he surrendered to his impulse to lean against Flynn, cheek against his shoulder. Flynn laughed fondly. His spare arm coiled around Mathias’ waist.

“Save it for later, Grandpa.”

Mathias ignored him, allowing a cool smile to curl his lips as he stared at the boy across the table. 

“I’m going to beat both of you, then,” the youth said, digging into his pockets and dredging out whatever coins he could find. Flynn hummed.

“I dunno mate. At sea they say redheads are supposed to be unlucky, but we have two here and I think we are _killing_ it.”

The youth swiped the dice into his hand. He tossed them down.

And they played.

Naturally, Flynn left the bar more than forty gold richer. The reckless, intoxicating feeling of victory was hot in Mathias’ blood. When they stumbled out into the mage district, cloaked in the welcoming cloth of the night, he pulled Flynn into a wild kiss and they stumbled together into a narrow alley and onto the grass. He felt about twenty years younger. A youth again. Alive.

His love for Flynn had seized him like a madness, but in the aftermath, as they lay in the shadows panting with wet grass against their backs, Mathias felt cold all the way to his bones.

He had scared himself for a moment, with the intensity of his emotion. He feared, based on his past experience in romance, that such frantic, desperate feelings never lasted.

“I’m sorry,” He said, deeply ashamed of himself, and regretting his loss of control. “Do you still love me?”

“What? Of course I do! Why would you even ask?”


	5. The Siren's Lullaby

“ _Tides,_ Mat. You feel good.”

Flynn’s nails scraped against Mathias’ desk – the one in his office at the SI:7 headquarters for a change, because Mathias was tired of being fucked over the desk at their house. It was, of course, very possible that they might be interrupted at any moment. One of Mathias’s agents may return from duty. The mail girl could arrive with her daily deliveries any second. It wasn’t even off the table that the King himself might wander in while they were fucking, but Mathias didn’t really care all that much. Flynn’s cock was thick and hot, and it was exactly what he needed to fill the empty pit in his stomach. At least, it would be for a little while.

Flynn, hair spilling over his shoulder and tickling against the side of Mathias’ face, leaned over him. He braced himself with his spare hand splayed on the spymaster’s lower back. The curve of his body was protective and strong, and he moved with a force that left Mathias breathless. The rough contact pushed out all other thoughts, and between Flynn’s low keen of pleasure Mathias wove the gasps and moans that typically he would keep cloistered in his chest.

From inside Flynn’s upper bicep, usually concealed, the image of a siren watched Mathias being fucked. This particular tattoo had always been his least beloved – most superficially because the depiction was raunchy. Thoroughly inappropriate. Her bare breasts were smooth and pointed, her long hair hung down over her hips to barely conceal her sex. Flynn had been nervous for him to see it at first, and had warned him it was borderline pornographic, but still he hadn’t been prepared for the sense of discomfort it inspired in him. Usually, Mathias tried hard not to look at it, because in the simplest terms the siren just made him feel as though she was laughing at him, but for some reason he couldn’t pull himself away from her now. Her flat ink eyes were glittering with strange light, the passion in Flynn’s hips echoed in the intensity of her gaze, and the corners of her lips seemed curled in a mocking smile. He hated her with a passion that burned in his guts, but at the same time he had never felt so compelled by a woman in his life.

Flynn changed his angle, grip on the desk slipping, and his erection dragged against Mathias' favourite spot. Precum dripped thickly over his cockhead, smearing against the side of the desk. Far away, he thought he could hear the sounds of agents working downstairs. Sharing lunch. Chatting amongst themselves. The homemade sandwiches Flynn had brought him, wrapped in a square of brown paper, sat forgotten atop the pile of counterfeit maps on his desk. When Flynn thrust himself forward hard enough that the desk scraped against the floorboards, the sandwiches nearly slid off and onto the ground.

The danger of it all was sublime. Mathias wondered fleetingly what would happen if they _were_ interrupted, and the thought that Flynn might just keep going spurred a wave of pleasure down his back. He didn’t care, he realised, who knew the way Flynn took him. The temptation of his body, the maelstrom of his touch, and the reckless way he tore Mathias out of this dull, hollow life was the envy of the gods themselves. If this was what it took to prove he wasn’t just a walking shell of a man, then so be it.

The smiling siren above him seemed satisfied by this revelation, and for the first time Mathias thought he saw a sliver of himself in her. A wanton seductress. A temptor. What an alien concept – he had never felt even attractive before, let alone sexy, but when Flynn moved his hand to grip his throat, and pulled his head back to kiss him with burning desire, he felt giddy with how much Flynn wanted him. How Flynn was _his,_ and he was Flynn’s and somehow, after everything, he was wanted.

How glorious.

Mathias hoped with a soaring, impossible ache, that he might feel like this always; he whined and reached behind himself to seize Flynn’s hair.

“ _Harder,”_ he breathed, and Flynn obliged him. His movements were beginning to grow irregular and Mathias knew it wouldn’t be much longer now. He reached down with his spare hand to stroke himself, and he hadn’t realized how badly he needed the touch. Flynn’s fingers on his throat were a sweet pressure, his panting an urgent invitation.

_Cum for me._

Climax came on him like a tidal wave, pulling through his muscles in heavy, relentless surges, and drowning him in bliss. Flynn clung to him, hips shuddering, and his teeth sunk into the muscle of Mathias’s shoulder to muffle the sound of his release. It hurt, but the sensation bled into pleasure, and he tumbled helplessly through it all without thinking once of where they were, or how risky this was, or how this was the first time he had cum in _months_ without feeling ashamed of his own lust.

In the aftermath, silence. Flynn lay against him, panting softly, and Mathias let his eyes fall shut so the only sensory input he was getting came from the hardwood under his chest, the weight on his back, and the wet, warm feeling of cum leaking down his thighs.

 _Let’s stay this way forever._ He hoped desperately. _May this moment never end._

“Alright, love?” Flynn asked eventually. Mathias nodded. He furrowed his brow, trying with every fiber in his body to cling to the warmth of the afterglow that was already dissolving from his frame. He fought so hard to remember how it felt to be loved ruthlessly.

“Yes,” He said breathily. “I’m fine.”

“Only fine?” a soft mouth pressed against the side of his neck, the caress of his lips ticklish, and making his skin prickle slightly.

“Just fine.”

It was too late. The relief of orgasm had already escaped him, leaving the shadow of embarrassment and sorrow its wake. His back hurt. There was a huge mess he needed to clean up in his office. With a frustrated little groan Mathias let his head drop against the surface of the desk.

“This was a terrible idea,” He said, fighting the foreign and unwelcome urge to start crying. “I shouldn’t have let you talk me into it, I apologise.”

Flynn made a puzzled little sound, and pulled back. The loss of his weight on his back was mournful, and left Mathias cold. 

“Huh?” He asked. “What do you mean? Talk you into what?”

“Fucking at work,” Mathias twisted around on the desk, trying to push himself up. “Do you have _any_ idea how awful it would have looked if we got caught?”

Flynn stared at him in confusion. His softening cock, still exposed through the laces of his trousers, might have made the situation comical if Mathias wasn’t spiraling so fast into misery.

Why was he so hopeless all of a sudden? Where had it come from? Every cell in his body was sore, the frustration of _weeks_ upon him like a heavy cloak of lead. He was supposed to be better than this, wasn’t he? An adult. A professional.

“Love,” Flynn’s brows creased, and he looked almost worried. “This was _your_ idea, remember? I just came to bring you lunch.”

Mathias turned his face away, pulling his pants back on and securing them, trying to ignore the discomfort this caused because he hadn’t yet cleaned himself up.

“I didn’t ask you to bring me lunch,” He said lamely.

Flynn sighed and rubbed the side of his face. There was a weariness in the way he looked at him lately, not quite a worry yet, but certainly worry was beginning to bud.

“You’ve been acting so strangely the last few weeks,” He mused aloud. “This isn’t because I told you I love you, is it?”

A flicker of something. Remorse? Embarrassment? Mathias felt his heart clench.

_Does he regret loving me?_

“What? Of course not. I don’t know what you are talking about.”

Mathias turned away from him and began tidying up his desk. He didn’t have a cloth or anything to wipe it down. The place where Flynn had bitten him was beginning to hurt.

“Don’t you? I hate to say it, but in the last few weeks you’ve been uncharacteristically unhinged. First the maps, then the gambling, and now… well.”

Mathias could sense him moving behind him. A large shape, casting a shadow over his own.

“Are you sure you're okay?”

Very few people had ever asked him that, and meant it. Mathias had endured many things in his years of service to the Crown. He had been tortured, worked to exhaustion, even sent across the sea to supervise a war that should never have happened, but somehow it was this - a simple question asked in the intimacy of his safe and familiar office - that almost broke him.

He realised that if he was at a point where Flynn was asking that, he had nothing to gain by obscuring reality any longer. “No.” he admitted, and even just _saying_ it seemed to take some of weight off him. Just a little bit. “You are right. Lately I have been feeling a little…”

Restless? Uneasy?

Any number of things.

Mathias tried to recall the last time he had _really_ felt okay. It had been when the two of them had journeyed together, probably, when they had woken up every morning somewhere new, with something to do. He thought he missed the distraction, the sense of escape from here, and it pulled into sharp clarity the way that here, everything was the same as it always had been, even before he had found Flynn and brought him home with him. Was he truly okay with that? To change so profoundly, yet continue to exist in a space where everything was the same?

“Maybe I need a holiday,” he thought aloud. “A trip that isn’t... work related. I don’t know, Flynn. What do you suggest?”

Flynn frowned at him, bringing his arms across his chest to hold himself, and the siren was concealed again against the side of his torso. There was worry echoing deeply in his eyes.

“A holiday,” He repeated slowly, “Sounds as good a place to start as any.”


	6. The Cock and Pig Story

“You were right about this place.”

Mathias looked up from his book when Flynn spoke, pulled from the pulpy universe of Marcus the Paladin and back into the loveseat outside the cabin they were staying at for the weekend. A fire crackled in the brazier nearby, and although it wasn’t snowing the air was clear and cold as though it would, soon enough. Flynn leaned against the jamb at the entrance of the cabin. He wore his hair loose, over his shoulders, and he was dressed in only a tunic hemmed halfway down his thighs. Mathias, in contrast, was bundled in wool and boots and Flynn’s favourite coat. Looking at the man in the doorway made him shiver.

“That it’s cold?” He asked. Flynn sniggered.

“That too.” He padded out of the cabin, leaving the door open and letting out all the heat from the fireplace inside escape, and picked his way towards the loveseat Matthias was sitting on. The spymaster watched him hobble a little, tender footed over the occasional pointed rock. It was odd to see him not wearing boots, and Matthias could see the tattoos he had on the tops of his feet bared to the open air. They were the only ones on Flynn’s body that he had not spent very long looking at, and they were arguably the most unusual. Black and white images of a rooster and a pig. He wore one on each foot.

When Flynn sat down Mathias could feel the heat radiating from his body. He was more warming even than the open flames.

“I meant that it’s pretty. And quiet.”

It was indeed. They had managed to find a cabin in Highmountain, with a view over the valley far below. The old fir trees clinging to the rocky mountain face creaked and lowed in the cold breeze, and resilient yellow flowers pushed through hard dirt and chips of stone that littered the earth. From here, the misted sea seemed to reach out into eternity, blending into the sky until far above in a strip of navy, pinprick stars were visible even during daylight hours. 

“How are you enjoying the book?” Flynn asked.

“It’s awful,” Mathias told him. “but I don’t hate it.”

“Tch. You have no taste.”

“In books?” He paused for a moment, one eyebrow arching in curiosity. “Or in men?”

“Well, I was meaning in books,” Flynn told him. “There’s no denying that your taste in men is actually impeccable.”

“Oh? Well if you say so.”

Mathias allowed himself a small smile, and returned his attention to the page. He wondered if he would be able to return to the headspace he had been in before he was interrupted, where he had been reading the words well enough, but not really processing them. His mind had been elsewhere, reflecting on other things, and there had almost been a moment where he thought he had been making progress…

This was the first place he had taken Flynn that was far enough away. Out here, he didn’t feel burdened by himself. By his memories, his anxieties, and his fear. He already knew from their earlier trip through the through the Eastern Kingdoms, that no matter where he went there he couldn’t avoid the burdens of history.

Mathias actually felt relaxed. Relaxed enough to take some time to contemplate, and unravel the knot of thoughts that had been rattling around in his head for some time.

Flynn though, seemed to want to talk, and Mathias thought he would allow him that. They had come here together, after all. It had been his idea. And it was nice to enjoy his company somewhere where Mathias didn’t feel so... Trapped.

“How are you feeling?” Flynn asked him, moving his hand to brush a strand of Mathias’ hair back into place.

“I’m… okay.” He answered honestly.

“Just okay?”

“Just okay. But that doesn’t mean I’m bad.”

“Uh huh…” Flynn regarded him with a single arched eyebrow, only half believing, and Mathias cold see it reflected in his clear grey eyes. Mathias continued.

“I think you were right. I needed some time away. I’ve had a few things on my mind lately and I just…”

He shrugged, not sure how to put it into words. The fire in the brazier cracked, filling the silence, and it was a comforting sound. Safe and welcoming. It made Mathias feel like he was home even though he wasn’t sure what ‘home’ was, right now, or what it constituted.

“Yeah,” Flynn nodded, gazing into the brazier as though lost in his own thoughts. “Like I said, you’ve been pretty unpredictable lately.”

“Have I?”

“Uh huh.” He paused for a moment, glancing at Mathias sideways before looking back, deep into the flames. “Ever since you brought home those maps. Before that. Ever since you sent out those scouts to all the corners of Azeroth.”

His eyes fluttered, and Mathias felt his heart ache at the beauty of him in profile. His skin, lightly freckled. His hair, like glowing embers. His strong brow. Soft lips. Easy smile. Mathias loved him so much.

“I’m sorry,” was all he could think to say.

Flynn made a face that hurt his heart.

“I was really afraid to go on that trip the other month,” He admitted. “Scared you might not be there still when I got back.”

“What?”

“Well, you know. You’d gone all broody and you weren’t sleeping. I was scared I’d fucked you _right_ off, and that you were so mad about it you wouldn’t even tell me to my face. Then when I got back you _were_ there, but you’ve been so deep in your own head that the only time you’ve been coming out has been to act like you’re having a midlife crisis.” He paused for a moment, frown squishing his features in thought. Then he asked.

“Are you having a midlife crisis?”

Ouch.

Mathias winced, remembering the youth at the Blue Recluse, who was significantly poorer for having implied he was old and crusty even though Mathias really did feel that he was.

“I hope not,” He said.

The conversation lulled again. Flynn was gnawing on his bottom lip, as though he wanted to say something more, and Mathias noted that he was pointedly not looking at his face.

It occurred to him for the first time that Flynn also might have had some things on his mind the past few months. The transition to their current life, after all, had probably been even greater for Flynn. He was the one who had uprooted everything. He was the one who had to settle in a new home. He was the one who didn’t have any friends here – no connections other than Mathias and the tattoos on his arms that linked him to his history.

Matthias swallowed as the understanding struck him.

_Oh no._

“I suppose, I should specify.” He forced himself to say. “I’m sorry, that I’ve been difficult to deal with. It’s not you. It’s just all this… stability. It’s novel for me.”

“Hm.” Flynn smiled tightly. “I know, love. I feel the same.”

_Oh no…_

“I didn’t mean to be cold, if that’s what’s troubling you. And I’m sorry if you thought…”

I wouldn’t be there when you got back. The words didn’t come out, but they hung on the air unspoken. Flynn didn’t say anything. Mathias felt a lurch in his gut – panic maybe. Remorse. Suddenly he wished he could undo the past few months completely and start over again.

What else was there he could say to convey his emotions? Should he try and give some kind of explanation? He knew he had to say something, that would end the silence. Anything. He didn’t care what.

He blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

“Do you remember when we went to those mines?”

Flynn looked as though he wasn’t expecting him to say that. Mathias wasn’t really expecting himself to say that, either.

“The mines?”

“In Westfall.”

“… Yes?”

Of course he did. He had asked Mathias over and over why the fuck they were there, when there were so many other places they could be going. Places that weren’t dark and creepy and dangerous as fuck.

“Remember, maybe you don’t, but at some stage I must have mentioned to you… Edwin? What happened to him?”

His name, unspoken for decades, felt like a spell said aloud. It darkened the air, conjured an ache deep in his bones, and the burden of the sound made him wince. The odd look that passed over Flynn’s face sped his heart, so it was little more than frantic bird beating its wings against the cage of his chest.

“…. I do.”

“Do you know… how things were with him? And with me?”

Mathias hoped with all his heart that Flynn would shake his head. Just say no. Even if he did, Mathias wanted him to lie about it, but he already knew with a certainty that made his hands tremble what his answer would be. Flynn was smarter than he acted, after all - the kind of man who could read maps better than he could speak his own tongue, who could win at games of chance with little more than faith in his own judgement. A feeling in his core, maybe.

Flynn hesitated, then nodded.

“I think I can figure it out. But… what does that have to do with me?”

“Nothing,” Mathias told him. “It has nothing to do with anything, really.”

That was obtuse, even by the standards of a secret agent.

Flynn must have thought so too. He sighed, and turned his to regard him.

“Mat.” He said his shortened name, a gentle affection that no one else on Azeroth would ever dare to use, with such tenderness and such exhaustion that it hurt. “Are you telling me that the reason you’ve been acting so mad lately is because you fucked a dead guy when I was pre-pubescent, and didn’t even know you existed?”

“No!”

Did he _have_ to say it like that?

“I’m not guilty about that. I’m not ‘guilty’ about _anything_. I’m just having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that somehow, after all of that, after _everything_ that’s happened to me in my life, I made it to this point where I am now and I'm happy. For the first time. I’m really happy.”

“… And? Is that not a good thing?”

Mathias didn’t even know how to explain. How to justify his recklessness, his search for something to do, wrestling with insecurities about being old and miserable and made of terrible memories that won’t stay dead, and not knowing what to do with himself because now he was finally experiencing happiness.

“I’ve never had to just be happy before Flynn. Do you have any idea how hard that is for me?”

Flynn listened carefully to what he was saying. He did not shiver, and he did not draw his limbs closer to himself, even as the breeze picked up and above them the needles on the fir trees whispered their own secrets amongst themselves. 

“I do,” He said eventually. “I understand.”

Flynn stretched his bare legs out in front of him, feet pressed against the ground flat so his toes were a few inches from the base of the brazier, and pointed to them.

“Pig and rooster,” He said, “One on each foot. Do you know what they are for?”

Mathias was admittedly taken aback by the subject change.

“… I don’t know Flynn. They ‘represent your ‘becoming’’?”

He shook his head.

“They are so I don’t drown at sea. Pigs and chickens always survive shipwrecks because the boxes they are carried in float, unlike everything else. It’s magic. Kind of. Superstition.”

“… Okay?”

“Well. The issue with the boxes is that they aren’t very comfortable.” He said it with the kind of emphasis that a sage might put on a statement about the nature of the universe. “Although they help to get an animal from point A to B, and they make sure they don’t _die_ if anything really shit happens _,_ it’s not usually until the poor bastards get out of the crates again that all that hassle even feels worth surviving through. Do you get what I'm saying?”

It took Mathias a moment, but then it clicked.

“I’m the chicken.” He said. Flynn nodded.

“Or you could be the pig. I don’t care I’m not big on details. My point is that, you made it this far because you were in a tight little box of keeping your head down and pushing through, and when everything went to chaos you only survived because your box _ensured_ you did. So you should come out of the box now and be glad you made it. Otherwise… was it worth it at all?”

Mathias sat with that question for a moment, lost in thought. He remembered what it was Flynn had said about becoming, on that morning all those weeks ago. He felt himself, teetering on the cusp of synthesis, recognizing in quick succession the parts of himself that had to exist before he became this version of himself, now. Was it really that easy, then? To simply stop looking back and start being present, and accept what used to be used to be, and accept that the new world he was living in now was _not_ a challenge to this past, but an extension.

Flynn watched him as he thought, with an expression on his face that Mathias never thought he would see on the face of a man who looked at him. Hopefulness. Compassion.

_Love._

After a moment, he reached for Flynn’s hand and laced his in it. His palm was warm. Familiar. Like they were made to hold one another like this, always.

“Flynn. When we get home, would you be able to do me a favour?”

“Of course, love. Anything.”

The spymaster smiled.


	7. Between a Dagger and a Deep Place

It was late afternoon. Mathias had just finished work, but he wasn’t tired. In fact, he had been surprisingly energetic all day. That energy though, had been mostly wasted on distraction, his thoughts racing around his head like steam tonks and filling him with a specific variety of anxiety he wasn’t very familiar with. Would he be able to go through with this? Or would he falter? Mathias was not prone to faltering often – when he did it could mean the difference between life and death. Not just his own. 

He sat at the kitchen table, in the last of the sunlight that shone through the window and illuminated dust fragments floating in the air. Flynn was by the sink, rummaging through the cupboards for a bowl and a clean dish towel. He found them, shuffling over to the dining table and setting them down next to the paraphernalia already spread out across the polished wood. A bottle of Alchemists Alcohol. A special needle Flynn had borrowed from one of his sailing friends. A dish of ink he had mixed up himself, using ingredients he had bought from the apothecary a few days ago.

“Are you _sure_ this is safe?” Mathis asked him. He grinned and shook his head.

“Nope. But I'm not dead, am I?”

“Fuck this up and you will be.”

“Duly noted.”

Flynn sat down in the seat opposite him, and regarded him over the gear that lay between them. He had a pensive look, and the afternoon sun hit the side of his face like liquid gold spilling over carved relief. He was beautiful, yes, but Mathias noticed for the first time the faint lines around the corners of his mouth. The etching of a million smiles around his eyes. Mathias felt a small flutter in his chest, a twinge of empathy for the man ten years his junior but nonetheless equally subject to the passage of time. In spite of it all, Flynn still loved _him_. Of everyone on Azeroth.

_At the end of it all, through Helheim and high water, I still made it here to you._

“If you want to pull out Mat, then this is your chance to say it.”

He picked up the needle, dropped it into the porcelain bowl he had fetched from the cupboard, and lifted the bottle of alcohol to unscrew the top.

“I know.” Mathias tensed his jaw, teeth gritted hard together, as he watched Flynn pour the contents of the bottle into the bowl and over the needle. It seemed so… rustic. Like field medic stuff, hardly suitable for a formal procedure. He hardly believed that the people who had done this to Flynn had done it like this, but Flynn had assured him they had. At least, they had for some of them. Others, he admitted, had been done in a more professional context, but there were no professional studios for this kind of thing in Stormwind.

“So, you’re sure then.”

“I’m sure.”

“Speak now or forever hold your peace?”

“Stop asking or I will change my mind!” He felt a flush rising in his cheeks. Flynn gave him a crooked grin and winked.

“Alright love, no need to get worked up. You’re as nervous as a kobold on a boat, is all. You need to be more relaxed and you also need to move closer so I can reach you.”

Mathias huffed and dragged his chair closer, the legs scraping on the polished floor. He sat aside the table now, and before Flynn could ask he rolled the sleeves of his shirt up to his biceps, exposing long, pale arms to the open air. It felt… strange. He didn’t usually bare himself, unless undressing completely, and even though Flynn had seen him naked many times there was a sense of powerful intimacy in this. A vulnerability. He felt unclothed like he never had before, even fully dressed.

He rested his left forearm on the table, elbow to hand, and turned his palm upwards so Flynn could see the entire terrain inside of his wrist. This skin there was thin and transparent. Beneath it, veins. Delicate rivers of life coursing through him.

Flynn’s eyes touched the exposed skin, then flickered up to Mathias’ face.

“Here?” he asked.

Mathias nodded.

Flynn tipped his head in acknowledgement, and shuffled his own chair closer. His knee was pressing against Mathias’ thigh, and when he leaned past to pluck the needle from its bath, Mathias caught a breath of his scent wafting past him.

Soap, salt and whiskey.

Familiar and safe and warm.

He watched Flynn dip the tip of the needle in the dish of ink, noting that his mouth felt very dry and his heart felt very fast in his chest. It was the same kind of fast that happened the first time Flynn had kissed him. The same kind of fast that happened in the field, when he was waiting in a dark room for a mark. His touch on Mathias’s arm was gentle, and he hesitated before he began, glancing to the towel sitting on the table briefly.

“Wipe your arm with some of the alcohol for me?” He asked.

Mathias dunked a corner of the cloth into the dish, and did as instructed. Flynn hummed, and turned his face downwards to look at what he was doing.

“This is going to feel a tiny bit like someone is stabbing you repeatedly with the point of a needle,” He said.

“I can’t wait,” was all Mathias could manage.

This was probably the most reckless thing he had ever done.

When he felt the needle prick him for the first time, it spurred a short shot of adrenaline, and the urge to jerk his arm back almost overcame him. He resisted it, turning his face away and staring at the opposite wall of the apartment instead. The bed, in the corner they used as a bedroom, was still unmade - Flynn had been sleeping when he had left for work that morning, tangled in the sheets and snoring softly. Clearly it had not occurred to him to straighten up before Mathias got home. This meant that Mathias would need to do it before they went to bed tonight, which was going to be a massive pain in the ass especially since there was always a chance that Flynn might decide he wants to fuck before he went to sleep. Then he would need to get up and change the sheets again, and Mathias wasn’t even sure they _had_ any fresh sheets. When was the last time Flynn had done laundry?

He came very close to diverting his attention to household matters, but he winced as Flynn began to find a rhythm, and soon there was no hope of forcing himself to think about chores or work or anything other than the persistent, irritating prick of the needle. The pace was easily the worst part of the experience, and It reminded Mathias of certain torture methods he had read about once upon a time. The dripping of water falling against a bound body for hours and hours. Or the never-ending tickle of sand hewing down a cliff of solid stone.

 _Distraction,_ he repeated to himself. _A distraction._

Mathias sucked in a deep breath, and tried to think of the most distracting thing he could. It was strange, how distractions never seemed to happen when he wanted them to. His mind, for the first time in ages, was blank.

Flynn paused in his work, and without looking up, he said.

“Mat my love. I need you to relax some more.”

Easier said than done, but he tried anyway. Flynn seemed satisfied. He resumed his work at that same agonizingly steady pace.

_This had better be worth it._

At this point though, Mathias didn’t even care that much about what it looked like. Flynn would be the only person who saw it, after all. He hadn’t even checked if Flynn knew how to draw. No, Matthias was more concerned about the fact that he _could_ do this, as opposed to fixated on what it looked like in the end. In a way, it didn’t matter, because it wasn’t about the style or the elegance or even the artistic merit of such a thing. It was about committing to himself something important. A lesson hard learned that he never wanted to let go.

_I am the product of all my experiences. I am the page on which the story of my life is told._

Told to himself, and to the man who loved him. Today, and always.

He focused hard on the pattern of his breathing. On the rhythmic tapping of Flynn’s fingers etching his arm. He felt himself begin to relax, soon enough.

The whole process took about forty minutes. Flynn didn’t lose focus the whole time, and he faltered only to dip the needle in the ink dish, dab the spot he had just inked with the cloth to clean it, and resume again. When he was done, Mathias thought he was just doing the same thing again, so he was surprised to see him sit up and glance at Mathias in expectation.

“… Do you like it?” he asked.

Mathias felt his stomach drop for a split second, before he looked at his arm.

_What if he didn’t?_

He needn’t have worried.

Flynn, it would seem, was a proficient artist. Certainly not the best Mathias had ever seen, but good enough. The facsimile he had poked into Mathias’s arm almost bordered on beautiful, and by all accounts, it was a very good likeness. It was moving, that Flynn was able to recall the details small dagger Mathias always carried on his belt so clearly. The handle was no larger than a coin, the blade was twice its length and pointed downwards towards his hand. There was no blood – Flynn had already explained this to him. The trick was to put the ink into the skin layer, but not pierce through. Now Mathias was seeing it for himself, he almost couldn’t believe the control and practice this must have taken. Flynn had said he had tattooed his crewmates before, but had warned him he might be out of practice.

He wouldn’t have known it, looking at the results.

“It’s perfect,” Mathias told him.

Flynn’s face lit up, and _light._ He was so gorgeous. Mathias’s heart seemed to double in size, to accommodate how much he loved him.

He dropped the needle into the bowl, and picked up the cloth to wipe the tattoo again.

“Does it hurt?” He asked. Mathias shrugged.

“It feels… tender.” He lifted his arm, bringing it close so he could see Flynn’s handiwork in greater detail. From this close, every dot of ink was clearly visible – the tight clusters which characterized the shadows, and the loose ones that brought highlights out of his flesh.

“There’s a wax I can make you to put on it,” Flynn told him. “to make it heal faster.”

“I can’t just get a priest to do it?”

“No, magical healing messes up the ink.”

Flynn reached for Mathias’ wrist, gently pulling it back to him to regard the result once again. He made a soft sound of satisfaction.

“I’ve never noticed how sexy your wrists are.” He said, matter-of-factly.

“What?”

Mathias laughed a sharp, small laugh, and pulled his hand back to his chest. Flynn shrugged.

“I don’t see them much,” He said, rising to his feet. “But once that’s healed, I’d love to get more acquainted.”

Mathias felt a faint flutter of arousal behind his navel. Flynn brushed his hand against the side of his cheek, and bent down to kiss him on the mouth. A shiver of desire swept through him.

“I’ve got something else you can get acquainted with, in the meantime.” He murmured against Flynn's lips. “If you’re interested, that is.”

Flynn was _very_ interested indeed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Probably don't do this at home lmao go to a professional for all ur tattooing needs this has been a PSA from your friend Garf


	8. EPILOGUE: Terra Incognita

“Maps?”

“Maps.”

Mathias set the bundle of maps down on the table, in front of Brann Bronzebeard of the Explorer’s League, and looked at him expectantly. When the Dwarf did not reply, he relented, offering a further explanation.

“One of our agents sent them to me,” He said, pulling off his gloves so as to handle the papers more delicately. “He claimed they were ancient Mogu in providence, but after consulting with an expert I’ve come to the conclusion they are either fake, or misattributed, and likely of no value to the agency.”

He unfolded one of the maps – the one Flynn had called an azimuthal projection – and spread it across the table in the middle of the Hall of Explorers. Brann raised a busy eyebrow, and leaned in closer to see the map.

“This is o’ Azeroth?” He asked. Mathias shook his head.

“Some may be of Argus, as a matter of fact. But we don’t have the resources to pursue that line of investigation. I thought it would be better to turn them over to you, and maybe someone in your network would.”

The dwarf nodded thoughtfully, one hand rising to scratch at his bountiful beard.

“Argus you say?”

“ _May_ be argus.” He pointed to a shape on the azimuthal map, which he recognized as possibly being the edge of the landmass he knew only as MacAree. If it had been tossed into a giant planet sized morter and pestle and jimmied extensively, that is. “See, this could be MacAree. If you squint at it. You would need to fact check this, of course.”

“I’m sure we can find someone ta check it out, Aye.”

The dwarf seemed convinced. He looked up to the leader of SI:7 and gave him a warm smile. “Did you want us tae keep you in the loop by any chance? Tell you what it is we might find out, if anything?”

Mathias shook his head.

“It’s fine,”

He had stopped caring about the maps weeks ago. He had barely thought of them, for ages. The sooner he got them out of his office, the better, or they would just end up forgotten at the bottom of a shelf for the rest of his life. Even though he wasn’t bothered about them, that still seemed like a shame, and it had been Flynn’s idea that he should bring them here.

 _You know how archeologists are,_ he had said, wisely. _They love their maps even more than pirates do._

Right again _._

Mathias began to fold the map up, satisfied that he had come to the right place, and for a fleeting moment he forgot he was not wearing gloves - the tip of the tattoo inside his arm was exposed to the air, and the second it emerged he could tell the dwarf had seen it.

_Oops._

“Well now, Spymaster!” He was more surprised now than when Mathias had presented him with the maps. “That’s a new addition I’ve not seen before!”

He felt himself flush, redder than his hair. Brann had been in Boralas, and he had seen the sailors and their tattoos just the same as Mathias had. He had even seen the way Mathias had stared at them at first, curious but repelled. Fascinated, but reluctant to consider that there were strange things in this world that were actually quite beautiful, if one learned how to look at them right.

“It’s nothing,” He lied, pulling his sleeve down and tugging on his gloves as fast as he could. Brann laughed aloud.

“Ah, yer blushing like a young maiden! Most unlike you, I must say. I take it things with the reputable Captain are going well, then?”

Mathias did not respond for a moment. He wondered if the thing he was feeling really was shame, or if it was something else. The last remnant of fear, that he was changed. He wasn’t the same person who stood there on the deck of the _Wind’s Redemption_ , and gazed with distaste at the Kul Tiran men with tattoos all over their arms and backs.

“It is,” He said truthfully, “Wonderfully, as a matter of fact.”

“I’m glad tae hear it.” Brann beamed at him, and patted his hand on the top of the stack of maps. “In that case, shall we head to the inn for a touch o’ dinner before you head off? I know your lad liked the drink, an’ I can suggest you a few souvenirs to take him back.”

Mathias thought of Flynn, waiting for him back at the apartment with welcoming arms and a dinner he had made with love and a surprising amount of culinary finesse. As much as he didn’t _want_ to visit a dwarven inn, which were prone to being rowdy and too hot and had ceilings too low even for him to stand up straight in, he did think that maybe Flynn deserved a gift or a million. At the very least, he deserved a few good beers. 

Mathias nodded.

“Yes,” He said evenly, pulling himself upright, to his full height. “I think he would like that.”

_I think I would like that. To make him happy._

This, he supposed, was his life now. Gestures and gifts and thoughts of another. Someone to give him advice and lend him an ear, and someone to tell him stories about things he had never seen and places he had never known. This was the land of comfort and security – a life that was theirs, made up of moments they could share together, free from the burden of the memories that had brought them to here. A becoming. A returning. A home.

He left Ironforge later that evening, smiling to himself and laden with many bottles of beer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well here we have it folks. ^w^
> 
> I wrote all of this over a month ago, over one caffeine fueled weekend, and it was one of the first things I'd written in over two years. It's also one of the few multi-chapter stories I've ever completed, albeit a short one, and I know its kind of silly and deeply self-indulgent and theres a shitton of cringey nonsense and mistakes contained herein. HOWEVER. I had a nice time, and i hope you did too - especially since you spent like an hour outta your life to read it.
> 
> Thank you for stopping by!

**Author's Note:**

> fun fact i havent written a multichapter fic since 2017 so i apologise if my plot-threads are loosey goosey and also if its shit 
> 
> xoxo  
> your friend Garf


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